The New Résumé: Dumb and Dumber

Job Seekers Play Down Their Credentials to Avoid Looking Overqualified

By

Jane Porter

Updated May 26, 2009 11:59 p.m. ET

Kristin Konopka sent out nearly 100 copies of her r&eacute;sum&eacute; in January in search of receptionist work, but got only one callback. That's when Ms. Konopka, a 29-year-old New York actress and yoga teacher, took her master's degree and academic teaching experience off her r&eacute;sum&eacute;.

The calls started coming in. The slimmer version of her r&eacute;sum&eacute; landed in 30 in-boxes and earned her three callbacks and two interviews. "It definitely picked up the interest," says Ms. Konopka, who realized quickly that people don't "want to hire anyone who is overqualified."

Securing work in a tight economy means more job seekers might find themselves applying for positions below their qualifications. Many unemployed professionals are willing to take paycuts for the promise of a paycheck. But to get a foot in the door, candidates are gearing down their r&eacute;sum&eacute;s by hiding advanced degrees, changing too-lofty titles, shortening work experience descriptions, and removing awards and accolades.

In the past eight months, Jamaica Eilbes, an information-technology recruiter for Milwaukee employment agency Manpower, has had to weed out more overqualified r&eacute;sum&eacute;s than usual from the stacks that cross her desk each day. "I'd never feel comfortable putting a really high-level candidate into a lower level position," says Ms. Eilbes, who recruits for Manpower and other clients. "We don't want to take you on if we think you are going to jump ship."

ENLARGE

Matt Collins

But in recent months, Ms. Eilbes has seen more master's and doctoral degrees at the bottom of r&eacute;sum&eacute;s instead of at the top. She's also seen candidates omitting or trimming job descriptions that showed they had substantial years of work experience. R&eacute;sum&eacute;s on which job descriptions taper off as they progress down the page raise Ms. Eilbes's suspicions. "How do I know I can trust them later down the road if there's something on their r&eacute;sum&eacute; they decided to take off so they could have a better chance at getting that job?" she says.

Still, for some professionals who find themselves constantly rejected despite decades of experience, scaling back the truth -- or at the least, some of their experiences -- can feel like the only chance at an interview.

Lenora Kaplan, 49, has 26 years of marketing experience but doesn't want her r&eacute;sum&eacute; to show it. When she lost her job as vice president of public relations at a small Las Vegas marketing firm in January, Ms. Kaplan searched for work with little success. At an interview for a shopping-mall marketing-director position in February, she was told that the hiring budget had only enough for a junior-level employee and that her r&eacute;sum&eacute; showed she was overqualified.

Many of the jobs she comes across ask for far fewer years of experience than she has. "There is nothing to apply for" at my level, Ms. Kaplan says. She quickly realized her job experience was pricing her out of too many positions. Her solution: To try not to look as senior level as she really was. So she eliminated certain jobs and removed details about speaking engagements and board positions.

In some cases, job seekers are being told by hiring agencies to tone down their r&eacute;sum&eacute;s if they want to get hired. When Bridget Lee, 29, moved to New York from Shanghai eight months ago and put her application in at three temporary agencies, she was told to play down her work experience before they would send her r&eacute;sum&eacute; to potential clients. The temp-agency version of her r&eacute;sum&eacute; changed titles like "manager" and "freelance trend researcher" to "staff" and "office support" and omitted entirely her title as partner of a small marketing agency. "It's been a lesson for how I present myself," Ms. Lee says.

Career counselors advise against making too many drastic changes. But they also say the demand for this kind of restructuring is on the rise. In the past three months, Tammy Kabell, a Kansas City, Mo., job-search coach, says more clients are requesting her help to "dumb down" their r&eacute;sum&eacute;s, whether by changing job titles, playing down experience, or altogether omitting some impressive achievements. One recent client, a 61-year-old former chief learning officer at a tech company, insisted on omitting her C-level job title from her r&eacute;sum&eacute;. She was fearful her application would be weeded out by the Web search-optimization tools companies use to manage r&eacute;sum&eacute;s.

Some r&eacute;sum&eacute; writers advise reworking a r&eacute;sum&eacute; into a functional one stressing transferable skills instead of past job titles and accomplishments. "Instead of focusing on the big achievements that might scare an employer away, you can spell out what you can bring to an employer in the next position," Ms. Kabell says.

Of course, reducing your r&eacute;sum&eacute; to a skeleton of what it truly should be isn't likely to land you the job you really want. While it took Ms. Lee eight months to get a call back for a job that matched her real experience, this month she landed a position as a temporary account manager -- with potential for permanent work -- at a New York design firm. The interview and job offer weren't earned using her dumbed-down r&eacute;sum&eacute;, but rather with the original.

"You have to make those creative edits when it comes to short-term work, but in terms of long-term work, you have to stay true to your experience," says Ms. Lee.

Thanks for the tip! Personally, I prefer a little culture; unfortunately, I think Mr. Eliot is right. The dumber zombie machine clean ABC closer sociopath with a clean mean resume...brief. Less is more. We should all share resumes on a website and help each other out, rather than pay for these consultant services. I too need to be in the loop.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.